Posted
by
timothy
on Monday July 18, 2011 @08:19PM
from the make-your-robot-do-its-job dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Serdar Yegulalp provides an in-depth tutorial on how he rooted and upgraded his Motorola Cliq XT, one of many Android phones made infamous for not receiving further Android updates beyond 1.5. 'It turned out to be quite an odyssey, with twists and turns I describe here in order to help those who wish to embark on a similar journey,' Yegulalp writes. 'Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it. '"

Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it.

The time spent doing this could have been spent on a billable (or freelance) project that would have paid for a new phone (and then some).

Yes, it's a good feeling to know you beat the technology. And yes, it's your phone and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But how many times will you have to root the same phone model? Will the process be similar or completely different with your next model? Sometimes the upgraded features are worth your time & effort, and other times it's worth the cost of a better phone.

Although the practice of rooting this phone probably wasn't worth the effort for one phone, the fact that it was documented will help others with the same model, so I can see a definite benefit to this. The beauty of information sharing...

Except this guy didn't document it at all in a way that's really going to help someone out, unless they do the same stupid mistakes that he did, like first try to root it while having an antivirus program running. Anyone with this phone will probably do a lot better off of looking at different results on a google search. He basically just says "I rooted it by following directions I found online, installed a custom ROM with Motoblur, then switched to Cyanogenmod." Except he takes three pages to say all of that, without ever really describing much of any of the actual steps required to do so (he went a little bit more in depth on the recovery or "bootloader" as he calls it, but that's about it).

Reading through his post it shouldn't have taken more than half an hour from start to loaded ROM. Any other time would have been time just spent messing with his phone. It's not like he designed his own custom rom or something.

The result might be a more enjoyable phone though, i rooted my vodafone 845 nova (99 euro prepaid bargain bin android phone a year back) and i enjoyed it a lot more with root acces and a different launcher, even if the process of rooting wasnt exactly fun.

The time spent doing this could have been spent on a billable (or freelance) project that would have paid for a new phone (and then some).

I'll admit, I don't know how long it took the writer of the article to do whatever he did. I'm not particularly inclined to read the article since it keeps referring to "jailbreaking" an Android device which indicates the writer has no clue what he's talking about (Android doesn't run in a chroot jail to begin with so "jailbreaking" it is meaningless). However, the entire process of taking my Galaxy S from stock to a custom ROM took about 10 minutes, and the process of changing from one custom ROM to anot

The time spent doing this could have been spent on a billable (or freelance) project that would have paid for a new phone (and then some).

Actually the time spent could have been used to try to find a freelance project, I'd say he would be lucky to get a freelance project and complete it in the time it takes to upgrade his phone with a custom rom after using an exploit to gain access.

I've rooted my phone but not upgraded it and it took me about half an hour to do it in total. I got my last windows mobile phone to duel boot android in a similar amount of time. It doesn't take effort or skill, usually someone else does most of the work and yo

Ironically THAT could be his billable project! Giving people speed upgrades without erasing all their data... providing a phone that has had the attention of an IT professional (automagic (Trying to get this term see mainstream appeal, it means: Having your machine do everything that might be useful without user intervention") backups, better apps, under/overclocking, additional features etc.

I know it sucks for Google but when people figure out Android phones have a 6-7 year lifespan compared to iPhones

Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it.

The time spent doing this could have been spent on a billable (or freelance) project that would have paid for a new phone (and then some).
Yes, it's a good feeling to know you beat the technology. And yes, it's your phone and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But how many times will you have to root the same phone model? Will the process be similar or completely different with your next model? Sometimes the upgraded features are worth your time & effort, and other times it's worth the cost of a better phone.

Was it worth the trouble? Yes, in the sense that learning how to jailbreak your own phone is a valuable skill, and I got much more functionality out of the Cliq, when I was expecting to simply junk it.

The time spent doing this could have been spent on a billable (or freelance) project that would have paid for a new phone (and then some).
Yes, it's a good feeling to know you beat the technology. And yes, it's your phone and you should be able to do whatever you want with it. But how many times will you have to root the same phone model? Will the process be similar or completely different with your next model? Sometimes the upgraded features are worth your time & effort, and other times it's worth the cost of a better phone.

What's wrong with fun? Freelance work is boring. This person had fun and accomplished something useful for himself in the process.

Since you clearly work 24/7 and never do anything other than billable work, we can thankfully expect you'll be dropping dead any day now. Hopefully this happened before you had a chance to breed.

So tired of idiots who push forward a moronic concept that nothing should even be done simply because they could have worked elsewhere. Literally, the notion is idiotic. Furthermore, not everyone can readily find extra work, especially in this economy. Such a contrary notion is literally idiotic. Not to mention, not

It was worth it because perfectly functional electronic hardware didn't end up contaminating a landfill. The obsession with having the newest gadget and junking old ones only because they're not new is disgusting, and you are disgusting for encouraging the practice.

The article could have been more thorough regarding technical details, but anything that helps people learn about the possibility of upgrading older hardware is worth posting.

I unlocked and rooted my old G1 to use as my overseas phone. I travel to Italy on occasion for work. While it's a rather slow phone, even by the standards when I bought it, I can stick a local sim card in it and get my email, Google voice messages, and Google maps (which I was very much glad for when I got onto the wrong bus one afternoon) as well as a little emergency tethering. And while the speed can be a little frustrating, it does mean that I'm getting use out of it and keeping it out of the landfill a

Where the hell do you see anyone paying 2x-6x more for Android vs. an iPhone?

I think I paid $79 for my HTC Desire with contract, which if I'm not mistaken is actually less than most people pay for an iPhone - and I didn't have to decide "Gee, do I want to buy the base model or pay an exorbitantly high markup to have more storage space?" - I just bought my phone with the only capacity it's available with (8 GB microSD) and then went out and bought a 16 GB microSD card for $19 to upgrade it - vs. paying $1

The android phones you get with a contract are usually locked and loaded with 80 crappy apps and stupid custom UI that slows down your phone and drains your battery life. The only android phone I would consider buying would be a Nexus and last I checked it was $99.99 for a locked version with a contract or $500 unlocked.

Don't talk about the iPhone ecosystem unless you know what you're talking about. In the midst of trying to sound superior it ends up making you sound incredibly ignorant. There tons of free apps on iTunes.

Sooooo, based on that statement you could also say that the iPhone 4 is superior to your phone in almost every aspect too? I mean there are some things the iPhone is better at and some that your phone is better at, so really you made no point at all with your post.

I have an old HTC Hero that has a badly cracked screen, that I'd love to repurpose as a UPnP audio server over Wifi, but every method I've seen to root it requires touching the screen at some point (and I don't know how to get VNC access without rooting it). Is there a way, or is it garbage now?

If you are really set on doing this, you could replace the screen. I don't know how to root that particular phone without using the touchscreen, but I do know you can buy a replacement screen for $30-50 or so. Or buy a non-working/broken one on ebay and swap parts? Maybe not what you were looking for, but it could work.

Agree. By default Android isn't locked down like where you need to get Steve's permission to run something. I can't imagine someone familiar with Android using that term. Android phones aren't usually in the walled garden where they need to be broken out.Rooting, and/or running an alternative OS is another thing altogether.

Jailbreaking doesn't make sense in the Android realm. It is akin to calling lockpicking something like safecracking. Similar, but what is needed to get a safe open has little to do with getting tumblers to line up.

There are also degrees of getting a phone functional in the Android realm that are not present in the iOS ecosystem. With iOS, you have the usual locked down state, a tethered JB, and an untethered JB. You also have if the phone is locked or unlocked.

It's more or less the same thing. You have to root the thing to jailbreak it, usually.

The tablet manufacturers seem to be a lot nicer about this. PanDigital released the source to their Android-based readers, and Archos lets you do pretty much anything you want with their Android-based PMP's and tablets.

The tablet manufacturers seem to be a lot nicer about this. PanDigital released the source to their Android-based readers, and Archos lets you do pretty much anything you want with their Android-based PMP's and tablets.

Must be a new policy. Archos was one of the worst. You could soft-root it, but it won't stick. They locked the hard drive to the bootloader (you can't replace the hard drive... it own't boot without it). Then everything's signed so you can't really replace Android on it.

So he rooted and installed cyanogen? And he wrote a technically inaccurate article about it? Wow!

This is just a sampler -

Another addition -- that, again, isn't immediately visible -- is a new bootloader. This
lets you perform all sorts of low-level functions with the phone: wipe the user data,
back up the currently installed version of Android, or install a modified version of
Android

I rooted my HTC Magic, a long time ago and have been running aftermarket ROMs on it.

It's kind of cool that I have current generation Android running on 2008 spec hardware which was abandoned by carriers at version 1.6 and the community has lost interest in updating Android for such decrepid hardware (CyanogenMod has stopped supporting this past 6.1). It's a testament to how awesome the OSS & modding community is.

Was it worth it? The phone works fine for calls and texts, has 90% of it's battery life, and is still working flawless after some horrific abuse that would have seen a iPhone 4 shatter into dust. (They don't make Droids like they used to). But increasingly many new Apps just don't work on such a old phone, let alone run acceptably. Many crash due to lack of RAM unless I enable a swap partition on a SD card (yes it's linux after all, can do that easily).

Ultimately I learned a lot about how the OS works, and learned quite a lot about how an OS should be done. Innovative multitasking and memory management and security too. Puts desktop OSes to shame. Somehow, it's Linux, yet you can make a lot of changes to your OS above and beyond installing apps without ever having to punch in a password to elevate to root. After decades of desktop OS practice, this is refreshing security practice.

You know what really is cool?There is a Windows Mobile 6.5 ROM for my old HTC Himalaya, so I am able to run the last Windows Mobile version (6.5.3) from 2009 on 2003 spec hardware which was abandoned by HTC at Windows Mobile 2003 - not even WM2003SE And it even works well.

Not to speak of my HTC HD2, which came with WM6.5, currently runs Android and can also run Windows Phone 7, Ubuntu or MeeGo.

I also want to learn more about Android OS and I have a Magic (Tmobile MyTouch 3G) that I can play with. Can you point me to some good references as starting points? I haven't had much experience with the Linux kernel and OS, but I really want to learn. Thanks!

I had to do the same with my wife's Cliq. I was told when I bought the phone it would get 2.1 in less than 2 months. I told them I wouldn't get it if it wasn't going to get the update. 10 months later and Motorola is telling me 2.1 will not work because it only has 256 Mb RAM. Well XDA [xda-developers.com] and Simply-Android [simply-android.com] to the rescue. I was rocking Gingerbread in no time and with a little tweaking the phone is stable and fast. Somebody handed me a stock G1 yesterday and I'm thinking it's just not fast enough or enough RAM. 2 hours later I have it rocking a custom Gingerbread ROM and it is quite snappy. My son replaced his dumbphone and is enjoying Android goodness via WiFi.

Interesting. Motorola similarly held off 2.2 for *YEARS* on the milestone. I eventually got custom firmware on it, but that was only once somebody figured out how to get past the locked down/signed bootloaders.

What *really* pissed off a lot of people was that the phone was advertised as being flash-ready, but that features wasn't even available until 2.2

Of course, it also ran like crap on 2.2 until I replaced the stock launcher with "Go Launcher Ex"

They would much rather your phone become so unusable as time goes on due to advances in software, that you have to buy a new phone every 18 months. This is why Verizon never carried the Nexus One. Another good example is that Samsung Galaxy S 2; it's not available in the United States yet because of the stranglehold the US carriers have on the market.

This is something that has bitten the phone makers in the derriere. Yes, they did get some more churn on Android phones, but what it has done is made people start drooling over the iPhone, especially now that it has a CDMA version.

The iPhone doesn't have the hardware specs an Android phone does, but for the average user, it will have a current OS and run current generation apps for at least one year, maybe two. If Android device makers allowed older devices (like the Motorola Cliq) to be able to keep up w

I dare say an iPhone will run 'current gen' apps for a lot longer than "a year, maybe two". A lot of people out there are still using the (3 year old) iPhone 3G, and that still runs ~most~ current apps just fine. Maybe not some particularly resource-intensive games or graphics software, but most other stuff. I can't imagine apps on ~any~ platform (Apple, Android or otherwise) becoming unusable in so short a time frame... most people keep their phones for 2-3 years at least.

"Better Facebook support. Like it or not, the iPhone FB app is a nose better than the Android one. HTC Sense and MotoBlur are steps in the right direction, but ideally, there should be a unified effort."

This is exactly why Android is going to be better than Apple. Apple is going to get in bed with Facebook and only support their app. Android has Bloo, an alternative app.

You can replace all the Google apps easily (not sure about Apple apps on iPhone) . Interestingly you can't remove them, but that's a "

The Galaxy S2 is pretty awesome. A friend of mine has a shiny new one that I played around with last week. Even as someone that's a firm Apple/iPhone fan, I must admit it's got me thinking about Android next time I am due for an upgrade. The larger screen is a real selling point and makes me wonder whether Apple might actually increase the screen size on the next iPhone to compete, even though they've said in the past they aren't interested in increasing the current model's screen size.

I am not sure if that's worth it. I have an HTC Touch Pro, I love the keyboard, it's only 3 years old, but I don't feel like abandoning it yet. So I grabbed the xdandroid code, and built a custom bundle to run on it, spent a lot of time making it work the way it is now (but still a lot of crashes), so I think it would be probably better off to work on something else to earn the money and buy a new phone. But what a waste to give it up, the hardware is perfectly fine, just that the software/platform has been

The last true "open" phones were believe it or not..... Windows Mobile based devices like your Touch Pro. No locked boot loaders, an active custom ROM community, and easily modded. I was hesitant on going with another touch screen only phone after having a Samsung Omnia (small screen + failing/drifting digitizer made it impossible to type), but the newer phones with 4.3" screens made it much easier to type.

The difference is Jailbreak an iPhone = install any app. Most Android phones already allow you to install any app. Root=replace the ROM/kernel/OS and get superuser permissions so you can work outside the normal Dalvik sandbox permissions.

Rooting actually has nothing to do with replacing the ROM, kernel or OS.

Rooting is the act of installing the superuser.apk file into your phone's flash memory. Basically, giving you admin/superuser permissions in your own phone.This sort of thing is normally locked via bootloaders by carriers or manufacturers because superuser permissions can be just as dangerous as they are useful. It's not necessarily just Dalvik permissions that do it, but normal users are denied su permissions on the default install bec

I think maybe you're missing my point? I dont see where this idea comes from:"Rooting actually has nothing to do with replacing the ROM, kernel or OS." If they require root, then they are related, no? I know they are separate processes but rooting is the "enabler" -- akin to jailbreaking's enabling of non-App Store app installs.

I only threw in Dalvik because a rooted device can use apps that have su permissions beyond that of typical apps. Another one of the things it enables.

Its not really jailbreaking, to 'root' your phone only really gives you the ability to install custom ROM's (version of the OS) on the phone. Jailbreaking was different and nessecary if you wanted applications that are not on the iTunes store. Rooting your phone is only nessecary if you want the latest version of Android and Samsung, Motorola, HTC, etc cant be bothered upgrading.

Of course you can just get a Nexus phone if you really care about having the latest Android.

Android does not have a walled garden (in the sense that you can install apps from non just the official Andorid Market, but from anywhere you please). You still dont get root access by default (atleast most phones done), and the ability to modify the bootloader or kernel is not guaranteed. But yeah the source code is available, and people do build custom roms, though they still have to get past the locked bootloaders (Only a few motorola phone had the bootloader locked I guess).

I ask why do we need to jail break an android phone? Wan't the point of Android that it was supposed to the alternative to the evil Apple phone that trapped people in a walled garden. Doesn't it seem that android is the worst of both world. No benefit of the security of the walled garden, but no benifit of automatic upgrades and protection from the telcos.

Having an iPhone doesn't guarantee automatic upgrades, etc. either. Apple really likes dropping hardware support as soon as they're able to get away with it, just like any other manufacturer. Try putting the latest iOS on the 1st generation iPhone. Good luck. However, you can put the latest Android on there.

You dont, you can do everything you can do on a jailbroken Iphone on an un-rooted Android phone.

You only root when you want to properly tinker with the OS itself, not the programs running on it.

Make sure you understand the distinction between jailbreaking and rooting:

Jail Breaking: Getting around the manufacturers restrictions on what you're allowed to install on your phone. Hence you're "breaking" your phone out of its "jail".Rooting: Gaining root level access to the OS itself allowing you access to change (or break) every part of the OS.

Jailbreaking does not grant the level of access Rooting does.

Most people root as a precursor to installing a custom ROM, last time I checked there were not custom IOS ROMs out there.

it would certainly be awesome if there were - though the whole monopoly on the hardware thing is what prevents it, most ROMs are compiled from other base ROMs and tweaked or rebuilt - as there is only one iOS and one line of hardware you don't really have the diversity of base developer ROMs to work from.

I too have a Cliq, and I got tired of the overall sluggishness and instability of the thing. Yeah, I could have gone out and gotten a new phone, but I still have 8 months to go on the contract, and I would have to buy my way out. The installation of Cyanogenmod was kind of an experiment to see if I could make the thing more tolerable. Worst case, I brick the thing and go out and get something else.

The only thing time consuming for me was to back things up ahead of time. Using different forms of backups that most people have never even thought of. Including

a) First use Sprite Backup (a paid app) to backup things like text messages and so forth.b) Back up all of my contacts out of MotoBlur, and then import them into Google. I would never buy another Moto phone again, so I would have needed to do this anyways..c) Use "Astro" to back up all apps installed on the phone.d) Root the phone. Cyanogenmod instructions for my phone were pretty clear, and this was easy.e) Then back up the recovery partition. Basically use the "dd" command to back up the partition to the SD card.f) Install custom recovery code "ClockworkMod".g) Use the custom recovery to again back up the phone - this backs up the MotoBlur version of software currently running.h) Download and install the new ROM. There were a couple of other important steps I needed to do as well - flushing caches to make sure things are stable. The Cyanogenmod instructions were pretty clear as to what needed to be done in which order.

After that, I was done. And it was like a new phone. Quite responsive, and it seems quite stable.

Why pay for Sprite Backup when you can use "Call Logs Backup & Restore" and "SMS Backup and Restore" for free? They backup to files on your SD card, and allow you to restore after you've rooted, wiped, and updated your OS.

"I would never buy another Moto phone again, so I would have needed to do this anyways"

The new Motorola Triumph for Virgin Mobile does not have MotoBlur; it uses stock Android (2.2 right now but should be upgraded to Gingerbread, or at least it can be rooted and manually upgraded to Gingerbread).

A few weeks after the Captivate (Galaxy S i897) 2.2 update got pushed back several times, I decided to take the leap into custom roms for my phone. I found XDA, which had a decently understandable guide on how to root your phone, and a list of roms that one could use, along with tons of different kernels and modems one could use to make various tweaks to your phone. I tried a few different roms, and settled on an older, slightly more stable 2.2 rom names Firefly.

Given the capabilities of these phones, and the complaints on/. about rogue apps tracking people; who keeps an eye on these roms? What prevents a rom from, lets say, enabling GPS and logging data and transmitting it to some server, or turning on the microphone and acting like a bug? I know the Android source is available, but these roms are not the stock code. Not all of these roms have sources available. So, does anyone check the available code or the roms to look for things like this?

Doing just this. It's recently gotten a lot easier with signed kernels and radios hitting the scene. Which means you don't need fastboot, very useful when you're doing multiple phones on a windows machine. For some reason the google usb driver breaks after each phone requiring a full reinstall. It's easier on Linux of course.

I also put a VOIP number/unlimited long distance forever with no bill on it:) Calling the company payoncephones(.com).

I was performing an update for my Desire Z (unbranded G2) and it managed to completly corrupt itself, now its sitting with the warrenty guys where they have been twiddling their thumbs for three weeks saying they haven't been able to fix it. Personally I intend on rooting this phone the minute I get it back. Any good mods for Desire Z / G2?

Actually there IS an analog to jailbreak in android. Some carriers disable the "Unknown Sources" checkbox in Settings -> Applications. The act of re-enabling this is almost exactly the same thing as an iphone jailbreak.

The act of re-enabling this is almost exactly the same thing as an iphone jailbreak.

But thats not what this article is about. The author is writing a guide on how to Root a phone.
I agree with one of the commentors in the link "I can't take an article about rooting an Android phone seriously when it has "Jailbreak!" in the title and throws "'Droid" around. "

Well the good news is that most people don't care and they just want to use their phone with the latest OS installed without having to root their phone. So the only "fail" would appear to be on the part of Android phones that are unnecessarily locked out of OS updates. On my iPhone I always get the latest OS update, and I don't have to go through the process of rooting the phone. How's that walled garden you're living in there pal?

Exactly. The Cliq update to 2.1 was so painful to Moto, that they decided to leave the Dext (non-US name for Cliq) at 1.5 "for the best experience". Part of the problem I think is that Moto did an excessive amount of customization which made future updates more painful.

It isn't just Moto however. When you get a phone, the manufacturer really isn't guaranteeing anything with regard to updates of any kind. You might get them, you might not. But the carrier makes you sign up for a 2-year agreement, and l